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After FTC Decision, Google Rivals Look to Europe

After U.S. antitrust authorities dropped their antitrust probe of Google with a few concessions, the company’s detractors must now focus elsewhere–starting in Europe.

On Friday a spokesman for the European Commission’s antitrust watchdog said it had taken note of the FTC decision but it had no “direct implications” for its investigation, which began in 2010.

Thomas Vinje, a Brussels-based lawyer for Fairsearch.org, which represents Microsoft and other companies pushing for antitrust action against Google, said in an interview Friday that while “Google has done a good job of keeping the emotional temperature down” in its dealings with the European Commission, authorities there have “identified practices that could be deemed illegal, and which the FTC walked away from.”